Damsel[ed]: Some Rescue Required (#2 of the Damsel[ed] series)

Chapter Twenty-Five: Aura

Angelos.

"Kiddo," the man says, "hold your breath. This might hurt."

I've been holding my breath for minutes, so I give him an incoherent sound, not even a spoken response, a grunt.  My face is jammed into the steel table so that the bruises under my eyes and down my cheeks throb with fresh pain. The exhaustion, the pain, physically and mentally, it all sets in. I'm sitting in a crooked oak chair with the back digging into my spine and exposed wings which flex automatically. It's a nervous feeling, how my wings move on their own like that. It's like having hands that flail up out of nowhere. The feathers, too, they fluff up like cat fur.

"Kid?"

"Do your worst."

He slams the crowbar down on the links between the cuffs. The metal loops dig deeper into my wrists with each crack of the tool. My breath quivers. The table, I decide, is a nice color up close, and cleaner than you would think it would be. It's sleek and cold, like the stainless steel of my refrigerator at home. My heart pings in my chest, like one of the moving pieces in a pinball. Who would've thought home really was where the heart is? That the thought of it could make you cry. 

Adventure books are fun. You'd think the real stuff, at least the stuff real in my life—I'm almost wondering if my life isn't that real at all—would be equally as fun, but instead, it entails a lot of blood and a lot of pain.

"Oy," the man groans. "This might take awhile. Are you adverse to acid?"

"Um." I swallow hard. "Yeah. I mean, I don't like it, if that's what you mean."

His footsteps shuffle on the concrete. He had huff like the snort of a tractor-trailer. "Well, then. You're going to have to suck it up. Wait where you are. "

And so I do. I just listen to my own breathing and think. I think about a lot of things. I think about Gatsby being taken and Heaven collapsed in a limp heap on my bed and Jaylin trying to kiss me. I think about Ceres and Poison beating me and the crowds watching, not a single one stepping in and saying, "Hey, you're going a little far, aren't you?" And my mind goes hundreds of other places from there. Thought experiment: if you break the fourth wall, but you aren't fictional, then are you really breaking the fourth wall? And if you are fictional, but you don't know it, and you talk to an audience, is that a fourth wall break? Example: you are my hypothetical audience. This is all in my head. But what if you, hypothetical audience of hypothetical ladies who want to marry me because I'm a hypothetical gentleman, are not hypothetical at all, but real, and I'm just, like, a figment of your imagination? Am I breaking the fourth wall, right now, by talking to you? Or am I not, because I'm madly rambling in my head and don't really know you exist and—

So this is what insanity feels like. It feels like trying to talk yourself to death, like the madness of thinking yourself past reason feels more structured and gives you more control than reality does.

The man sighs and sets something cold by my elbow. "Interesting stuff this is made of, but I've seen it before," he says through a mouthful of something. He's a kind of chatty guy, and I like to listen to him speak. "In blades, mostly. Handcuffs are an interesting choice, but ingenious, come to think of it. You came to the right place."

"Fate." I swipe my tongue over my teeth, trying to rid the taste of blood from my mouth. "It's fate right?"

"Fate wants you dead, kiddo," he says after smashing the crowbar down once more. I bite down hard. The cuffs make me bleed, and I clench my fists until my knuckles feel like they're about to pop through my skin. He never heard enough of my story to warrant the "fate wants you dead" line, but I can't help but agree, and so I nod, never lifting my head, just rubbing my face against the cool steel table. It feels oddly nice, like I'm ironing out all the wrinkles in my face.